


Huff

by tkjarrah



Series: The Cooler Ward That Fucks [1]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: F/F, Fume Hood Has Become Catholic, Gen, Justice For Tempera, Minor Original Character(s), Mostly Canon Compliant, Parahumans (Parahumans Series), Post-Golden Morning (Parahumans), Slow Burn, Tempera Lives AU, Ward - Wildbow, Ward Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-05-18 21:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19342975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkjarrah/pseuds/tkjarrah
Summary: Defying everyone's expectations, Fume Hood continued trying to be a hero after the community centre attack.It hasn't been going... great.(On Hiatus)





	1. 1.1: Reaching Out [Touching Me]

**Author's Note:**

> UPDATE 12/19: this fic was written before basically any details about Fume Hood were known, so there's stuff in it that's no longer canonical. I probably won't pick it up again until after Ward is finished, and I'll decide then whether I'll edit it to match canon or leave things as is (probably the latter, but you never know)
> 
> UPDATE 10/19: NOT DEAD - just taking a backseat to other fics r/n  
> \-----  
> *scuffles through millions of characters to grab two who havent even got canon names* these are my favourites  
> hello and welcome! this is (hopefully) gonna be a spinoff fic kind of, focusing on Fume Hood and Tempera cause i think they do lesbianisms together which is fine. also they barely have any canon personalities so i get to go wild. should be canon-compliant except tempera survives 12 because gay rights. starts pre-community centre attack, and will mostly skip over events that have already been shown in Ward unless there's a specific viewpoint reason to show them  
> also its not gonna be PHO after this this is just like the glowworm equivalent

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**♦  Topic:  Incarceration?**

**In:  Boards** **► Parahumans Online**

**Burn_It_Up**

**Posted on August 21st, Y1:**

 

**(Showing Page 3 of 3)**

 

**►  Fanny_Smith**

**Replied on August 21st, Y1:**

Genuinely asking is there something wrong with you. even if youre actually ‘repentant’ or whatever how the fuck do you think going back to prison is a good idea or solution or whatever. You genuinely feel bad, pick up some fucking trash or something. do something productive instead of just being a self-pitying bitch.

⊙

 

**♦ Private Conversation with Deep_Fried_Paint**

**Deep_Fried_Paint:** hi  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** i saw you in the incarceration thread  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** hope im not overstepping but i think i know who you are

 **Fanny_Smith:** Fuck off

 **Deep_Fried_Paint:** not trying to start something i promise  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** youre bad apple right  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** pomme de sang  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** etc.  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** from boston?

 **Fanny_Smith: .  
Fanny_Smith: **what if i am

 **Deep_Fried_Paint:** oh good i wasnt actually 100% sure  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** XD

 **Fanny_Smith:** seriously?  
**Fanny_Smith** : how old are you

 **Deep_Fried_Paint:** rude  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** look im not trying to start shit for you i promise  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** i know youve taken the amnesty / i know your deal

 **Fanny_Smith:** great **  
Fanny_Smith** : another stalker

 **Deep_Fried_Paint:** hah! no, thankfully  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** although i am interested in hearing that story

 **Fanny_Smith:** what  
**Fanny_Smith:** do you  
**Fanny_Smith:** want

 **Deep_Fried_Paint:** right sorry  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** like i said i saw you in the thread  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** and you sparked something in my head cause  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** ive been around the norfair span recently  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** and i connected some dots

 **Fanny_Smith:** oh for **  
Fanny_Smith** : fuck’s sake

 **Deep_Fried_Paint:** oh good i was right  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** im assuming that’s what that reaction means anyway

 **Fanny_Smith:** fuck, yes, fine  
**Fanny_Smith:** what do you want, what is this

 **Deep_Fried_Paint:** you  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** wait wait wait  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** that was poor phrasing sorry

 **Fanny_Smith:** you dont say

 **Deep_Fried_Paint:** just  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** argh im sorry im not doing this right  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** you know what screw it  
**Deep_Fried_Paint:** one sec gonna switch accounts

 **Fanny_Smith:** switch accounts?  
**Fanny_Smith:** what, like you ha

**Deep_Fried_Paint has left the chat.**

 

**♦ Private Conversation with Tempera (Verified Hero)**

**Tempera:** Hey  
**Tempera:** It’s deepfriedpaint, if that wasn’t obvious

 **Fanny_Smith: …  
Fanny_Smith: **you use punctuation now

 **Tempera** : What can I say?  
**Tempera** : It’s a different mindset.

 **Fanny_Smith:** genuinely fucking uncanny

 **Tempera** : Listen, I’m going to stop beating around the bush.  
**Tempera** : I saw you picking up trash around the community centre.  
**Tempera** : And also in the financial workshop they were running there, but that was just a coincidence.  
**Tempera** : You’re genuinely trying to turn over a new leaf, aren’t you?

 **Fanny_Smith:** why the fuck do you care what im doing

 **Tempera** : I’m starting a team.  
**Tempera** : In/around Norfair.  
**Tempera** : A team of heroes, in case that wasn’t obvious.  
**Tempera** : I’d like you to consider joining.

 **Fanny_Smith: ...**  
**Fanny_Smith: .**..  
**Fanny_Smith:**...  
**Fanny_Smith:** you know admins are gonna mess you up good for imitating a hero

 **Tempera** : Ha!  
**Tempera** : Fair enough, I suppose.  
**Tempera** : How’s this for proof?  
**Tempera** : dxnJA67VvNx12.i

 **Fanny_Smith:** …  
**Fanny_Smith: .**..you’re actually serious

 **Tempera** : Dead serious.  
**Tempera** : Wait, that sounded like I was doing a pun.  
**Tempera** : I wasn’t.  
**Tempera** : But yes.  
**Tempera** : Look, as much as I love it, PHO isn’t the best medium for this.  
**Tempera** : Could we meet up, have a conversation?  
**Tempera** : I’ll make it worth your while.

**Fanny_Smith: ...**

**Tempera: .**..by which I mean I’ll buy you a coffee, beer, or bite to eat.  
**Tempera** : Your choice.  
**Tempera** : Apologies again for the poor phrasing.

 **Fanny_Smith: …**  
**Fanny_Smith:** …  
**Fanny_Smith:** sure, why not  
**Fanny_Smith:** fuck it  
**Fanny_Smith:** this might as well happen  
**Fanny_Smith** : seeing as you already know literally everything about me apparently just come find me tomorrow.

 **Tempera** : Fantastic! I’ll see you around noon, then!  
**Tempera** : You won’t regret this  
**Tempera** : Wait, that sounded sinister, didn’t it.

**Fanny_Smith has left the conversation.**

**Fanny_Smith has joined the conversation.**

**Fanny_Smith:** lil bit yeah

**Fanny_Smith has left the conversation.**

 


	2. 1.2: There's No Need To Feel Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gonna try and ride this motivation wave to at least up to the community centre, but no promises  
> fume hood and tempera don't have civilian names in canon, so I just made them up, Kadence Weil and Samantha Haynes respectively. the only info we have on either's race is that tempera has 'light brown skin' so im rolling with her being black, and fume hood's puerto rican cause its free real estate  
> also i tend towards shorter more frequent updates so if thats not your speed... uh, suck it up i guess

Kade stretched, her spine popping in an uneven canon as she arched backwards and let out a pained groan. She was really starting to regret not buying the grabber-claw kids toy from the thrift shop when she’d had the chance. She hadn’t wanted to be laughed at, but compared to the state her back was currently in that didn’t seem so bad anymore.

“Ooh, that looks nasty.”

Kade nearly jumped out of her skin, and she spun to face the woman who had appeared behind her. Her instincts had kicked in, though, an apple forming in her hand as she spun, and before she even fully realised she’d done so the momentum from her spin carried it out of her grip. 

Kade swore, and manage to yank it back just before it made contact.

“Shit,” she panted, directing the apple to drift back to her hand so she could dismiss it. “Sorry, I just…”

“It’s okay,” the woman said, giving a small buck-toothed grin. “No harm, no foul, right?”

She was black, maybe a little younger than Kade, short but with posture that hid it well. Her frizzy black hair was cropped down close to her skull, which would have combined with her broad, muscled shoulders to make her seem intimidating if it wasn’t balanced out by a pair of coke-bottle spectacles that made her brown eyes look almost cartoonishly large. Her clothes were rugged and unremarkable, work boots and overalls over a tank top, but they seemed slightly at odds with the glossy white, forearm-length gloves she-

Kade blinked. Not gloves, no, but a thick, glossy liquid that looked almost like paint, and with that her brain finally connected the dots.

“...thought you’d come in costume,” she said at last.

The hero shrugged a shoulder ruefully. “Didn’t seem fair. Besides,” and she held up one hand, waggling the fingers, “it’s not like I have much of a secret identity anyway.”

“Mm.” Kade bent down to pick up her trash bag where she’d dropped it. “Should I call you Tempera, then?”

“If you like.” When Kade stood up again, though, she found the other woman had moved closer, one paint-encrusted hand extended. “I’d prefer Sam, though. Sam Haynes.”

Kade glanced down at the paint and raised an eyebrow. 

“Oh, sorry,” she laughed, and the liquid rolled back to reveal her skin, light brown stained to beige by the paint. “I always forget.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Kade took it in her own. “Kade. Weil, I guess.” She wouldn’t normally include that part, but Sam’s geniality was a little contagious. “Yes,” she added, seeing the look on the other woman’s face, “really. It’s German, or some shit.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Sam replied with a grin. “I’m sure you get it a lot.”

 _Not so much these days, no._ “Regardless, it’s nice to meet you, Kade.”

“We’ll see,” Kade muttered, but Sam either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore it.

“So, what’s your pick?” she asked, gesturing with her hand in the vague direction of the main street. 

“Hm?”

“What’s your pick? Beer, coffee, food? Something else.”

“Oh, right.” Kade glanced at her watch - it was barely gone midday. “You’d actually get a beer now?”

“Well- no. I’ll get a soda and try not to judge, though!”

Kade couldn’t help but snort. “Coffee’s awful, so food then.”

“I know _just_ the place.” She started walking, confident, brisk strides, and Kade fell into step alongside her, longer legs helping to make up for her loping stroll. “You really don’t like coffee?”

“Yeah. Why’s that a surprise?”

“I dunno, you just seem like a coffee person.”

“Bitter?”

“Ha! Okay, maybe a little. Mostly just a… vibe, though.”

“Not much of a vibe person either.”

“I’m starting to realise that, yes.” She winked, and Kade grumbled something incoherent and stared at the passing concrete.

There had been a hint of a storm in the air all morning, and as they arrived at their destination it had just started to coalesce from muggy humidity into actual precipitation. Sam dashed ahead just as the rain started to fall in truth, making it to the doorway of the restaurant while remaining mostly dry, but Kade just flipped up the hood of her jacket and continued to walk, unhurried.

“Don’t mind the rain?” Sam asked as she caught up.

“Don’t like rushing.” And the rain was soothing, but she wasn’t going to admit that.

The restaurant was a small, diner-style affair, unremarkable but clean and tidy, with reasonable prices. It _fit_ Sam, somehow - or at least, the impression of her that Kade had gotten.

“Stay away from the fries,” Sam advised as they reached the counter. “Too much salt, too crispy.”

Kade nodded, then turned to the teenaged server. “Bowl of fries and some mustard.” 

“Oh, it’s gonna be like that, huh?” Sam muttered, under her breath but still loud enough for Kade to hear and smirk at. “Number 2 with no pickles, please?” 

Once they’d paid and found a table near the window, Sam got down to business. “So,” she said, leaning forward, hands clasped together. “What do you want to know?”

“Wh- _You_ wanted to meet _me_.”

“I know,” she replied, unfazed, “but I thought it’d make you more comfortable to have some control over the conversation.”

“Fuck off,” Kade snapped instinctively, louder than she’d intended. Sam didn’t even flinch, just sat there, waiting. “...sorry,” she muttered after a moment.

“You’re fine. I can imagine things haven’t been great for you lately.”

Kade had been staring at the linoleum floors, but at that her head snapped up. “What the _fuck_ is that supposed to mean?” she snarled, rattling the table as she shot upright out of her chair.

Still, that same unsettling lack of reaction. “How’s your power been lately?” she asked instead, as if she was discussing the weather.

“What the fuck does that have to do with-” The other woman’s eyes flicked down, and Kade instinctively followed them to her hands, and the two apples that had formed in them. Both were smoking slightly, the gas bubbling out of the surface before spilling over onto the floor.

She blinked at them. She hadn’t even tried to summon them, and yet-

A murmur interrupted her thoughts, and she realised that the entire restaurant was staring at her, eyes filled with fear and anger.

She opened her mouth, tried to say something, but the words caught in her throat, pulled back down into the growing pit of bile and disgust inside her.

“It’s okay, everyone,” Sam said, projecting her voice to address the room. “Nothing to worry about.” She turned to Kade. “Sit,” she instructed, not unkindly.

“Why should I?!”

She gestured to the chair again. “Because when I said I’d make this worth your while, I wasn’t just talking about the food."

Slowly, Kade sat back down, earning a grin from Sam.

"What do you know," she began, "about powers?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (weil is pronounced kinda like 'vile', which is why tempera reacts like that. a bit on the nose, but eh)


	3. 1.3: Why Can't We Be Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rey andino is blasto - fume hood dated him around the boston era, back when she was Rotten Apple

Kade blinked at her. “...kind of a broad question, isn’t it?”

“Ha, fair enough. About where they come from, then; how they work.”

She drummed her fingers on the table, staring out the window at the rain-pelted street. “The… normal amount? Alien computers hooked up to our brains?”

People had been talking about it as far back as Gold Morning - she’d arrived from her cell to the staging ground to find the collected capes already having murmured, worried conversations on the topic. Not _with_ her - she’d been inside long enough to lose most of her connections, and-

And Rey had talked about it, too. Not in detail, and she hadn’t always paid attention or understood, but in hindsight, she could make connections between things he’d said and details she’d learned later.

“Right.” Sam’s voice startled her back into the present. “So if I say the words ‘conflict drive’ to you, does that mean anything?”

“I... know what both of those words mean individually?”

Sam laughed again, dimpling her cheeks. She was very… laugh-y in general, Kade was starting to realise. Annoying. “The agents - shards, powers, passengers, whatever you want to call them - they’re using us all as… a simulation, basically. Give a bunch of people powers, see how they react, use that data to refine and repeat the next time around.”

Kade had a vague understanding of that much, but hearing it put so plainly was disquieting. “We’re lab rats.”

“Mm,” she nodded. “But that means they need us out and about, trying out new things, coming up with new ideas, and apparently the only way they can conceive of that happening is…”

“Conflict,” Kade finished, mind racing. “ _Shit._ ”

“Would I be correct in saying that was the sound of dots connecting?”

“You’d be a smarmy prick, but _yeah. Fuck._ I mean, I didn’t have a lot of downtime when I was…” _you’re in public, Kade,_ “back then, but when I did, or when I went…” _still in public!_ “...away, I started getting all…” she stuck out her tongue, “ _bleh,_ you know? Like, grey.”

“And your power started acting up?”

“Not… acting up, exactly, but yeah, in hindsight, it was a lot touchier, a lot closer to the surface. The leaking is new, though, that’s only been happening recently.”

“Have you been using it at all since GM?” She said it like that, just the letters, which was a bit unusual. 

“Well, I took a few mercenary gigs in the first couple of months, fending off wildlife and poachers and stuff, but after that, no. Not intentionally, anyway.”

“Mm.” The arrival of their food interrupted their conversation, the server glancing nervously at Kade as he set it down and hurrying away as soon as possible. The 'number two' Sam had ordered turned out to be something like a Reuben, but with a lot more pickled vegetables, both in quantity and variety. “I love this place,” she commented as she took a bite. “I used to get a sandwich exactly like this from the bodega on my block as a kid, ‘cause Ms. Rabitz who owned it gave everybody way too much sauerkraut no matter what. Said it was good for the ‘gitz’, which to this day I’m convinced is not actually a thing anyone has, or, in fact, a word at all!”

Kade chuckled despite herself. She had no trouble believing the other woman was a hero, with how charming she seemed to be. “New York?”

“Mm-hmm,” Sam confirmed through a mouthful of sandwich. “Born and raised til GM.” There it was again. “Used to work construction, if that wasn’t obvious.”

“Black lady working a trade? Can’t have been fun.”

She shrugged one shoulder, looking evasive. “It was what it was. Back to the topic at hand, though, if you’re not actively using your power, getting out and getting in… not _fights_ necessarily, but getting involved in stuff, mixing it up, it’s going to start pushing and sabotaging you in equal measure, trying to either get you back out there and into the conflict, or by bringing the conflict to _you_.” She pulled a flask out of her pocket and took a swig, and Kade realised with a start that she’d already polished off her full-size sandwich. “You mind?” she added casually, gesturing towards Kade’s mostly-untouched fries.

“Thought you didn’t like them?” Still, she pushed the bowl slightly towards her.

“I don’t.” She grabbed a few and popped them in her mouth, making a face. “Oh god, that’s even worse than normal. Did you just order them to be contrarian, or do you actually like this?”

“Eh, they're fine. Same as your sandwich, probably.” She didn’t elaborate beyond that, and Sam didn’t push. “Thanks for the… advice, I guess, although I’m still not sure why you’re bothering. With _any_ of this, actually.”

“Well, that part is basically a public service, reducing the chance you drop an SBD while grocery shopping or something.” The unexpected bit of toilet humour, seemingly incongruous with the impression Kade had gotten of the other woman thus far, was enough to draw a bark of laughter from her, much louder than intended. “But, well… like I said, I saw you around, saw you in the thread, and I guess… I didn’t want your efforts to go to waste, I suppose. It’d be a shame for you to go back to being a villain just because your attempt at being good didn’t involve enough pugilistics.” The disdain in her voice made it pretty clear what she thought of that.

“So it’s just more hero recruitment bullshit.”

She’d expected her to deny it, but Sam just shrugged one shoulder. “Sure,” she said casually, snagging a few more fries, “you can see it that way if you want to.”

“Doesn’t seem like there’s any other way to see it.”

“No?” She leaned forward again, eyes alight (but Kade didn’t miss that the rest of the fries were now gone). “Regardless of what we want out of it, you’re still getting something too. Funding, an outlet for your powers, and, well.” A little smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “I can’t believe someone who’s willing to pick up trash out of a desire to make amends won’t get something out of being a hero.”

“It’s an important job,” Kade grumbled defensively, folding her arms. “Someone’s gotta do it.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong - I genuinely admire you for doing it, and everyone else who does. But can you really tell me you don’t see the appeal of something more… _high impact?_ ”

Kade let her words sink in, mulling them over. “How did you recognise me?” she asked.

It was a clunky, obvious deflection, but Sam didn’t call her on it. “I had some… personal business with your… ex?” Kade nodded. “With Blasto. I never specifically researched you, but you popped up quite a bit over the years, and I’d apparently absorbed enough to connect the dots. Plus,” she added, teasing, “the name was a _bit_ on the nose.”

 _Yeah, can’t really argue with that._ “Who the fuck deep-fries paint?” she shot back with a smirk.

“Tempera,” Sam replied, lifting a finger and putting on a mock-sophisticated accent, “is a fast-drying painting method, and _tempura_ is deep-fried vegetables or shrimp. Thus, deep-fried paint!”

“...get a lot of fried chicken jokes?”

She sighed. “I _really_ thought it would go above their heads.” They shared a moment of exhausted amusement, united across the divide of hero and villain by the shared experience of being a brown woman around white people. “So,” she said, bringing the conversation back around with a little tilt of her head that Kade was starting to recognise and expect. “We haven’t really talked about the team much, have we?”

“Or at all.”

“Ah… yeah. I’ll take the blame for that one - I tend to,” she waved a hand vaguely, “ _wander_ , so to speak. Which my shard just _loves,_ by the by, ‘cause if it helps me focus when I’m on the clock, it’s a pretty big motivator, Pavlov and the bell and all that.” Kade didn’t know who that was, but wasn’t exactly about to admit as much. “Anyway, the team. So far, it’s two others, both relatively fresh - a thinker and a mover.”

“Anyone I’d recognise?”

“Well, I can’t really say more unless you’re joining, but probably not, no. You’d be the most experienced cape by a significant margin, myself included.” Kade had suspected as much - for all her charm and confidence, Sam felt _fresh_ in a way you rarely saw with old hands, on either side of the game. “They’re good people, though - if you trust my word at all.”

“I do,” Kade said, and found she meant it. “Is this a Wardens thing, then? One of the other big groups?”

“Well, I’m… Warden-affiliated, I guess, but apart from some connections they’re not involved. It’d be an independent venture, top to bottom.”

She had to admit, she liked the sound of that, even with the Wardens (and _h_ _er_ by extension) being a little closer than she was comfortable with. 

“Just around Norfair span?” she asked, trying to sound disinterested.

“Yes, but not exclusively - there’s a few things I’ve been keeping an eye on that I’m hoping to address. I don’t just want this to be a reactive thing - I want to make sure we’re actually _helping_ people, not just pulling things back up to ‘normal’ after the fact.”

“That’s… ambitious.” _Whimsical, more like._

Sam grinned. “Mediocrity died with Scion,” she said, with the air of someone reciting a catchphrase. It was patently ridiculous, _arrogant,_ but a part of Kade that had lain dormant for a long while reared its head, and she found that she liked it despite that - or, no, not despite. She liked it _because_ it was arrogant, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to feel bad about that.

“So?” Sam asked, a sparkle in her eyes. “What do you think?”

“...I’ll have to think about it,” Kade lied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tempera: *takes a long swig from a flask she was carrying in her pocket*  
> barkeep: ma'am no outside drinks are permitted  
> tempera, hoarsely: this is flour  
> \-----  
> conversations always end up going way longer than i intend them to tbh - this and chapter two were supposed to just be one update, but we got there eventually!  
> (if you get up in arms about the 'white people' joke, you're a cop and also boring)


	4. 1.4: Come Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is fine.

Tempera’s directions had brought Kade to a small field on the outskirts of the span. ‘Urban creep’, she’d heard it referred to as. The way the City’s construction and design created the feeling that the inner city was spreading outwards like a fungus, how you could go straight from apartment buildings to rough wilderness with no transition, no slow fading-out of buildings and roads. 

This particular area had at least been cordoned enough, and some effort had been made to level and clean it. Judging by the large building next to it, and the small shed that bridged the boundary between the two, it was supposed to be a school oval. There was a miniature bleacher on the other side, and she could vaguely make out two figures sitting on it, but they were too far away to make out any details and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her. 

The bus had deposited Kade nearly directly outside a full twenty minutes early, so she’d sat down at the stop, frittering away time on her phone until she wouldn’t be quite as awkwardly early.

“I thought you’d show up in costume.”

At Tempera’s words, an echo of her own from their last meeting, Kade looked up from her phone, surprised. “Don’t have one,” she said, kicking the duffel bag at her feet. “Got some bits and pieces in here, though.”

“Bits and pieces?” Kade had already seen the other woman’s costume, in the photo she’d sent through as proof of identity, but it still caught her off-guard in how similar it was to her civilian attire. The overalls were darker and sleeker, the tank-top was grey instead of white, the work boots were clean and new, but if it wasn’t for the neat block of paint she’d applied over her eyes, she would have just looked like her civilian self.

Kade stood up, bringing the bag with her and slinging it over one shoulder. “Put some stuff away in a storage locker before I turned myself in. Mostly personal stuff, but I had some bits and bobs I’d never ended up working into any of my costumes that I threw in there, cause what the hell, right?”

“I’m more impressed that a storage locker kept your stuff through the apocalypse.”

Kade snorted. “Oh, no, they ditched that shit immediately. I hired some folks about a year ago to try and find it, though, and apparently it was literally the only locker in the lot that hadn’t been destroyed or looted.”

“That’s… extremely lucky.”

“Hey, when it’s 99% to 1%, _someone’s_ gotta be the one. This time it just happened to be me.” Not quite a lie, but not quite the truth either. She wasn’t ready for that level of honesty. Might never be again, if she was being honest.

Tempera took her response with a level of consideration it probably didn’t deserve, then nodded. “Well, shall we? You can use the shed to change if you like - I’ve cleared our use of it and the field with the school.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Kade fell in behind her, slightly uncomfortable. Tempera seemed slightly colder than she’d been previously, and Kade worried that she was having second thoughts about the whole ‘inviting an ex-villain to be a hero’ thing. Then, of course, she realised that she was _worried_ about it, and unpacking that kept her distracted until they reached the shed, an unassuming sheet-metal and concrete construction.

The interior brought back serious high school memories (well, middle-school memories, really), and she couldn’t help but laugh as she set her bag down on the bench. It really was bizarre, what they’d decided to keep after the end of the world.

Back when she’d been a villain, her aesthetic had been about as consistent as her name, so the odds and ends she pulled out from the bag didn’t have much to unify them apart from the colour. A vambrace in a modern, minimalistic style from Bad Apple, a lacy top from Pomme de Sang, the kneepads with the teeth on them from Horse Apple (she was going through a… _weird_ phase at the time); every item sparked an unexpected surge of emotion and nostalgia.

“Kade?” She glanced up to see Tempera - no, _Sam_ ; she’d wiped away the paint-mask - looking down at her with concern. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Kade said hoarsely, and realised she was crying. Sam must have heard, and come in to check on her. “Shit. I’m sorry, it just-” she gestured at the bag, wiping furiously at her eyes with the back of her hand. “ _Shit._ ” She was full-on weeping now, chest heaving with strangled sobs. ”I’m fine, I promise.”

“You… don’t seem fine.”

Kade laughed at that, grinning weakly through the tears. “G-guess not.”

“Do you… want a hug?” Before she’d even finished asking, Kade had wrapped her arms around her, squeezing tight as she sobbed into her shoulder. “Uh. There, there?” 

The sheer awkward terror in her voice made it impossible for Kade not to laugh, which made her hiccup, which made her laugh even harder, and within seconds she was barely able to stand, Sam’s arms around her the only thing keeping her upright.

“Kade?” Sam asked. “Seriously, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Kade managed to choke out, “it’s just-” another hiccup interrupted her, sending her down another spiral of giggles. 

After another minute or two of that farce, stuck between intense sadness, infectious humour and _fucking hiccups,_ she started to calm down, pulling away from Sam and flopping down on the bench. 

“...feeling better?” Sam asked, extremely hesitantly.

“Yeah,” Kade rasped. “Sorry, I just-” she waved a hand vaguely, which seemed to communicate the general idea. “Caught me off-guard.” She took a swig from the water bottle she’d had in her bag to drive away the last of the hiccups, and stood back up, wiping away the snot and tears with her t-shirt.

“Bad memories?” Sam asked, indicating the bag.

“No,” Kade said, turning away while she tried to clean herself up. “Well, yeah, some, but… mostly good, if you can believe that?” She laughed. “God, I must seem so pathetic, sobbing over _good_ memories.”

“You don’t,” Sam said. “We don’t mourn the _bad_ times, right?”

That sentence alone nearly broke her again. “...yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I guess so.” 

When she turned back around, she found Sam looking at her with not only the expected worry, but genuine concern. Before, she’d thought that the lack of mask had made her think of her as ‘Sam’ rather than ‘Tempera’, but as she stared into the other woman’s eyes, she realised that it had been _this._ The _care_ , the unguarded emotion - something _shifted_ in the other woman when she switched into being a cape, and while Tempera wasn’t unpleasant, Kade was realising she vastly preferred this version of her. 

Belatedly, she realised she’d been staring and quickly looked away, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “Sorry,” she mumbled, “I-I’ll just-”

“Are you gonna be okay? I can tell the others you’re not feeling well, or-”

Kade waved the suggestion down. “No! No, don’t, I’ll be fine. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready to go.” Being vulnerable in front of Sam was one thing; having it revealed to the others, people she barely knew, was another.

A small part of her brain pointed out that she barely knew Sam either, but she ignored it. 

“Okay,” Sam said with a nod. “Real quick, though - how should I introduce you to the others? Are you going to keep one of your old names?”

“I…” She hadn’t actually thought about it. “Um, shit.”

“Not Fanny Smith, then?” Sam teased with a twinkle in her eye.

“ _God,_ no.” Kade hated being put on the spot, but she really should have thought about it earlier. “How about… Eve? Just for now, until I come up with something better.”

“Ooh, nice, I’m into it. I’ll wait for you outside, then.”

Kade watched her go, noting the change in stride and bearing as she reached up to reapply her paint mask. She’d met other capes who had a similar divide in and out of costume, but it seemed stranger to her now. It was probably just that she had been out of the game for a while, she reasoned, had forgotten the norms.

When she stepped out, Tempera gave her a quick once-over, then nodded. “Bits and pieces, right.”

Figuring that it was only temporary, Kade had gone for practicality over style, leaving her with a mis-matched but complete set of lightweight armour pieces, strapped over her jeans and t-shirt. She’d found a slightly dented domino mask to cover her eyes, after a little bit of digging, but she hadn’t managed to find the partner to the motorcycle glove she wore on her left. The one concession to style, though, was the jacket. Dark green and sleek, she’d gotten it right before the end of her villain days in preparation for a change of name to Sour Apple, but then the… but then things had happened, and she’d never used it. It had a nice, voluminous hood with weights in the lining to keep it from flying back, deep pockets, and a nice degree of dramatic flare when she moved.

“I like the coat,” Tempera said, and Kade was secretly a little bit thrilled to have her thoughts validated. “You can probably keep that for your actual costume, if you want.” Before Kade could ask what she meant, the hero had already started to stride across the field towards the bleachers, and Kade had to hurry to catch up.

“The others are Longscratch and Crystalclear,” Tempera said. “Longscratch is the mover, Crystalclear the thinker, but I’ll let them explain their own powers. They both know your history, sorry - didn’t seem fair not to tell them.”

“‘S fine,” Kade said. “I don’t mind.” She did, a little, but not enough to make a thing out of it.  
“Good.” Tempera glanced over, and for a second Kade thought she saw a familiar spark of amusement. “I’d tell you which is which, but I think you’ll be able to figure it out.”

“What is that supposed to…” Movement in the corner of her eye distracted her, and she looked back towards the bleachers to see the two figures she’d noticed early standing up, one of them giving a small wave. “Oh. Okay, yeah.”

Just from first impressions, it was evident that Tempera’s barely-a-costume was a team aesthetic as opposed to a personal choice. They were both men, looking closer to twenty than to Kade’s twenty-nine. The first was a white guy, average-looking in most respects except for the semi-translucent crystals covering the upper half of his head, at his joints and the backs of his hand. Crystalclear, she presumed, mostly because if he wasn’t she was going to be really mad. His ‘costume’ was just skinny pants that honestly looked like they’d be a pain to move in, and a baggy purple tanktop, but the crystals added just enough flair that it worked okay. Longscratch was orange in contrast, and wore what almost looked like a crop-top, leaving his (fairly nice) stomach exposed. His shorts were just long enough to look a little weird, reaching all the way down to his knees, and he wore a pair of shiny new sneakers. Apart from a basic domino mask, the only ‘costume’ element was a pair of gauntlets he held, buckler-sized shields with three foot-long blades extending from each.

Looking at them, Kade realised with a chuckle that if she stuck with her old tendency towards green, they’d have the full set of secondary colours, with Tempera’s white and black bringing everything together. She hadn’t consciously thought about it until just now, and wasn’t particularly bothered that the decision had been made for her. She’d only ever gone with it because her power was green anyway.

“Longscratch, Crystalclear,” Tempera said, “this is the cape I told you about. You can call her Eve for now, until she picks a name. Eve, Longscratch and Crystalclear.”

“Nice to meet you both,” she said, because… well, because it was what you said. 

Crystalclear nodded respectfully, and Longscratch made one of those noncommittal, ambiguous grunts that young men were fond of. Well, most men, really. 

“You’re the villain, then?” Longscratch asked. His English was excellent, but she caught a hint of an accent lurking underneath.

Tempera shot him a glare. 

“Ex-villain, yeah,” Kade said. “Gonna be a problem?”

“Wouldn’t be here if it was,” Longscratch replied. “Just wanted to see how you’d react.”

“You could have done that without being rude, ‘scratch,” Tempera said.

“It’s fine,” Kade interjected before an argument could start. “I used to roll with villains, I can respect that.” She realised just too late that comparing him to a villain might not be the best look.

Sure enough, his lips twitched slightly downwards, but he didn’t say anything else.

“I’m looking forward to working with you, Eve.” Crystalclear’s voice was soft and gentle, and made Kade revise her age estimate a few years upwards. Maybe pushing out those crystals was really good for his skin. 

“Likewise. It’ll be nice to have a thinker on my side for a change.” _Fuckin’ thinkers._

“One of the many benefits of working for the white hats,” Tempera said with a smile. “So! At some point, we’re going to have to sit down and do all the boring stuff, talk about our plan of action and maybe even some _paperwork_ ,” Kade and Longscratch both groaned theatrically at that, then glared at each other, “but for now, well. It’s a beautiful day, and we’ve got this nice, big field, so...” 

She held up one hand, and a perfect sphere of paint swirled up into it.

“Why don’t we have some fun?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * long, audible sigh *  
> this chapter was supposed to be the entirety of the team meeting  
> you can see for yourself how well that worked out


	5. 1.5: That Don't Impress Me Much

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I ever try to predict how long anything will take ever again, shoot me in the fucking face.  
> also presumably longscratch's powers extend further than what we see in canon but i think its funny if he's a fucking scrub.

“What,” Kade said, “we’re gonna play paintball?”

Tempera laughed, and to Kade’s surprise, so did Longscratch. “Oh no,” the painted hero said. “I’d kick _all_ your asses at paintball. Sorry, but it’s true.”

“Something of a home field advantage, yes,” Crystalclear said.

“Hell,” Kade added, “if nothing else, you don’t have to pay for ammo. They used to charge out the _ass_ for that shit.”

“Good riddance,” Tempera said. “But no, I was thinking more along the lines of… well, I’ll throw it to the group. Power demonstration first, or straight to sparring?”

Kade’s brow raised. _Sparring?_

“Hell yeah,” Longscratch said, punching one fist into an open palm. His gauntlets made the gesture slightly awkward - he had to twist the closed hand into more of a heel-strike to avoid the blades clashing against each other. “Sparring.”

“Disagree,” Crystalclear said. “Sorry, Longscratch, but we’re going to be fighting with each other, not against one another.”

“Eve?” Tempera asked. “Tiebreak?”

Kade glanced over at Longscratch, who was eyeing her up. She knew which option she’d prefer, but Longscratch had been aggressive from the start, and she was pretty sure he’d see it as a sign of weakness or fear from her…

...but she wasn’t a villain anymore - she didn’t have to think in those terms. “Demonstrations,” Kade said.

Longscratch sneered, and Crystalclear didn’t have a face, but she thought she caught a glimmer of approval in Tempera’s eyes.

“Demonstrations it is,” Tempera said. “I’ll go first, if no-one has any objections?”

No-one did, so she jogged backwards a few feet, putting some distance between them.

“We all know our classifications?”

A series of nods all around. _Hard to go ten years as a cape without picking them up._

“Great. I’m primarily a shaker, with some mover thrown in.” She raised her hands out to either side, and paint began to shoot out like water from a spigot, spilling onto the ground. “In case you hadn’t noticed,” and she flashed a quick grin that Kade somehow felt was directed at her, “I can make and control this stuff.” The paint on the ground had been pooling and seeping outwards, but it abruptly froze, then began to reverse course, rapidly forming into columns at least twice Tempera’s height. “It’s basically a very thick paint, thus the name, but I can also-” she swept a hand forward, and the columns dissolved, the paint sweeping forward to form a curved wall, blocking Tempera from sight. “-harden it!” she called from the other side. “Chris, would you mind?”

Kade was confused for a moment, until Crystalclear stepped forward. _Crys, not Chris_. He flicked a hand, and a shard of crystal shot out, disappearing into the ground for a second before flying back up and impacting Tempera’s wall. It exploded on contact in a plume of gas and crystalline shards, but the wall took the impact like it was a solid substance, not a liquid - small cracks spiderwebbed out from the point of impact, revealing the same matte black that the paint on Tempera’s arms faded out into.

“How strong are your blasts normally?” Kade asked Crystalclear.

“Not very. They can break wood or plasterboard, but can’t do much against steel.”

“Hey, it’s not your turn yet!” Tempera came _surfing_ over her wall on a wave of paint. She let it collapse while she was a few feet off the ground, dropping the rest of the way to the ground. The wall came apart as well, and all the paint swirled together into a perfect cube behind her.

“Radical,” Kade joked, doing a hang loose gesture with one hand.

“It is, isn’t it?” Crystalclear agreed, seeming to have completely missed the joke.

Tempera gestured, and a small stream began to siphon off the cube into her hand. As it made contact, the paint disintegrated into black flakes, creating a steady flow that blew away on the breeze as the cube grew smaller. “Have to touch it to dismiss it,” she explained. “It also sticks to surfaces, but that’s kinda hard to demonstrate out here.”

Kade tried to hide it, but she was impressed. It was a solid, versatile power - if she’d had to go up against it back in the day, she was pretty sure she’d have lost.

With her demonstration over, and the last of the paint dismissed, Tempera ceded the floor to Crystalclear. To be perfectly honest, Kade didn’t really understand most of the stuff he said about his thinker power - lots of words like ‘redshift’ and ‘blueshift’, lots of vague equivocating about edges and colours. She decided to leave interpreting that to Tempera, figuring she’d communicate the basics when it mattered. His blaster power didn’t seem to have much more depth to it than what he’d demonstrated - explosive projectiles, semi-controlled, had to pass through another surface before it became ‘real’. Didn’t seem that special to her, but the thinker power was clearly his main draw anyway.

Longscratch turned out to be a bit of a show-off, which Kade really wished she found surprising. A gesture with his ‘claws’ created three long divots in the ground, dirt spraying out to either side. He tossed a small pouch into the air, then flickered and reappeared at the other end of one of the divots just in time to catch it. Frankly, it seemed kinda underwhelming, but she wasn’t about to just come out and say it.

Even though she _really_ wanted to.

Then, of course, it was her turn. Which definitely wasn’t a big deal. Nope, nothing to worry about! It wasn’t like it went against every instinct she had, or like it felt like she was stripping naked in front of a crowd.

Nope.

Definitely not.

“So,” she started, then choked and had to clear her throat. “So,” she tried again. “I, uh. Make these.” She held out one hand, and three apples appeared above it, floating in a slow circle. In the days since she’d agreed to join the team, she’d started practising with them again, and the effects had already started to show - they no longer leaked gas, and had stopped appearing unprovoked _quite_ so often. “Used to call them apples, obviously, but I’m thinking maybe not a great idea anymore. Um.” _Dammit, how did they make this look so easy?_ She should have prepared or something, made flash cards.

Tempera came to her rescue. “They explode on contact, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, they do. I think of ‘em like they’re made of thick glass, if that helps. Except they don’t, uh, shatter, not like Crys’s, no fragments or anything. They do have, like, a knockback, kind of, but mostly it’s the ‘poison’ part of Poison Apple.”

She figured it was easier to demonstrate, so she sent one of the spheres arcing up through the air to hit the ground a few yards away. Clumps of dirt sprayed out as it shattered, with a noise that always made her think of pottery breaking (but like, _wet_ pottery, somehow), and vivid green gas ballooned outwards.

“S’like huffing paint fumes, apparently,” she explained. “Doesn’t affect me, so I can’t say for sure.”

“But you can say what huffing paint fumes is like?” Longscratch asked.

That actually stung, but she tried not to let show. “What can I say, I was a kid. Besides, huffing petrol was _way_ more of a kick.”

That got a laugh from the others, and even Longscratch smirked a little.

“Can do a liquid as well, and it’s a bit more potent, but it’s gotta make skin contact cause it’s liquid _or_ fumes, not both. Tastes like _shit_ , also, so uh. Don’t get it in your mouth?”

“I don’t think any of us were planning on it,” Crystalclear said, very seriously.

“Can you detonate them?” Longscratch asked. “Or does it have to be an impact?”

“Uh, no, has to hit something.” She mentally revised her assessment of him - it was a sharper question than she’d have expected. “But I can…” she flicked a wrist, sending one sphere out at a slower speed, then, once it had travelled a bit, fired another one after it at a much faster speed, causing both of them to explode. “So, you know.”

He actually seemed a little impressed at that, and Tempera gave a little golf clap. “Were you controlling them the whole way?” she asked. “That’s an impressive amount of range.”

“Ah, nah. I can control them when they’re close-” and she sent five or six spinning around her torso in uneven orbits to demonstrate, “-but there’s like a barrier about three, four feet out, and once they hit that, I lose a lot of control. I can still do like, basic re-directions, but mostly they sort of just follow the path they were already on.”

“You've got good aim, then.”

She waved a hand, as if she could physically deflect the compliment instead of just verbally doing so. “Eh. Lots of practise.”

Tempera smiled, obviously onto her, but didn’t push it further. “Well, we’ll have to look into getting everyone air filters at some point. But not just yet, cause that would put me at an unfair advantage!”

It took Kade a second to parse her words. “Wait, unfair- you mean-” _I’m supposed to ‘spar’ with_ her _?_

“What?” Tempera grinned, gesturing for the others to step back. “Chicken?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you had somehow missed the fact that longscratch and crystalclear dont matter that much the comparative length of their power descriptions should hopefully clear that up  
> (they's basic)


	6. 1.6: Saturday Night's Alright For A Fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *looks at latest ward update*  
> the fates have cursed me - canon intrudes upon my domain

_Shaker, okay. Um,_ fuck. _Did we_ ever _beat a shaker? Yeah, okay, Domino Effect, right, with the ripple thing, and uh. Sensate or whatever, the laser tripwire shit. Shakers… shakers set in, AoE shit, so we beat them by…_

_Going hard and fast, keeping them on the back foot. Right._

_Fuck, I_ really _don’t want to do this._

The entire thought process had taken under two seconds, Kade’s heartrate and adrenaline ramping up way higher than the situation probably called for. Tempera had only just started to generate her paint, spilling from her hands onto the ground and beginning to pool. 

Kade knew she had a pretty average power, as far as things went. A couple of embarrassing defeats early on had taught her that lesson, and the prison stints had made sure it stuck. Sure, she had a few tricks up her sleeve, but at the end of the day, she was basically just a normal human being with some vomit grenades.

So, when she didn’t know what else to do, she’d always just gone back to basics, and tried to live up to her classification. 

i.e., _blasting_.

Kade charged forward, summoning and firing off spheres as fast as her power would let her. A wall of paint immediately shot up in front of Tempera, but they hadn’t been aimed at her; they smashed against the ground in a rough ring around her, quickly filling the area with thick, green smoke. Almost immediately, there was a flash of white, and Tempera came flying out the top of the cloud, launched upwards by her paint. Kade immediately ducked into her smoke, narrowly dodging the fist-sized globs of paint Tempera fired at her. 

Not for the first time, she found herself wishing her power’s protections extended just a little bit further and let her see through her smoke as well. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t second-trigger on the spot, and ducked out the other side of the cloud just in time to see Tempera land, paint rising to meet her and dampen her fall. Kade shot a few more spheres at her, but they smashed fruitlessly against the glossy white half-dome that rose into their path, the gas failing to make it to the other side.

Kade continued to pelt the barrier as she moved, circling off to the left but putting increasing amounts of curve on the spheres so they would seem to be coming from the same place. Sure enough, Tempera came into view, still inside the dome, holding it solid with one hand while the other did… _something_ , Kade couldn’t quite tell. 

The hero hadn’t noticed her yet, so Kade took a few seconds to summon up as many spheres as she could, then sent them shooting at her at once, loose arcs around a central line. Some went off-course, a few even shooting almost straight up into the air, but she was going for quantity, not precision. 

Something must have alerted Tempera, because she spun around just before the barrage reached her, the paint flowing along with the movement to intercept it. Whether it was due to the rushed nature of the barrier or not, the combined impacts of the two-dozen-odd spheres exploding against it were enough to shatter the paint into white-and-black fragments, and the gas that flooded out was enough to completely obscure the dome.

 _God, I fucking missed this._ The adrenaline in her veins, heart pounding, ears roaring - it was like there had been a film over her life, and she’d forgotten what the world looked like without it until she peeled it away. 

She charged into the cloud, summoning more spheres - liquid, this time. The gas gave her an advantage, but it wasn’t usually enough to incapacitate someone - _definitely_ not an experienced cape like Tempera. If she could land a good enough hit with the liquid, though, that would put her out of the fight for sure. She did feel a little bad for subjecting Sam to that, but it wasn’t like she had any other ways of safely disabling someone. 

 _As long as she’s not pregnant,_ a dark little corner of her mind added. 

She growled, pushing the thought down as she dove into her smoke. It limited her effective vision to a few feet, but she didn’t suffer any of the effects, so it was still a net advantage for her unless Tempera had a thinker power she hadn’t mentioned.

A gleam of white appeared in front of Kade, and she fired off her spheres - not straight ahead, but down at the ground, at an angle that would cause the liquid to splash forward in a rolling wave. That trick had been Rey’s suggestion - and unlike most of them, it had actually worked.

She heard the telltale _splash_ of liquid hitting something, but there were no other noises, no movement disturbing the smoke. The reason became clear a second later, as she drew closer, and the gleam of white resolved itself into a rough statue made of paint, featureless and blobby. 

 _A decoy_. _Great._ Tempera couldn’t have gotten too far, but the decoy suggested she was still close by-

Kade took a step forward, but when her foot came down, it hit something solid and smooth instead of soft earth. She had barely enough time to process what that could mean, and then her leg was yanked out from underneath her, dragging her forward onto what she’d realised too late was a thin layer of Tempera’s paint. 

She hit the ground hard, cursing up a storm, but the paint wrapped around her ankle continued to drag her forward, sliding across the smooth platform until she emerged from the cloud. There, it finally stopped, but before she could get her bearings back, more paint surged up to wrap around her other limbs, holding her down.

Kade struggled fruitlessly for a second. One sphere wouldn’t be enough to break the paint, but-

“You okay?” It was Tempera, calling out from inside the fog and sounding distinctly unaffected, if a bit muffled. “Sorry if that was kind of rough.”

A second later, a silhouette formed in the cloud, and then the decoy Kade had seen earlier emerged, frozen in the same pose, sliding along the ground like it was an airport travelator. 

Kade blinked in confusion, but then realisation struck, and she let her head slump back. “Dammit.”

Sure enough, as it drew closer, the paint flowed away, revealing Tempera within. Her eyes were a little red, so she hadn’t escaped the gas entirely, but she’d evidently managed to avoid the worst of it. 

“I think that’s game?” she asked lightly. “Although we didn’t exactly establish a win condition beforehand, thanks to _someone_ jumping the gun.”

“Sorry not sorry,” Kade replied with a grin.

Tempera frowned, looking down at her. “You seem… oddly happy.”

Kade tried and failed to shrug. “Like you said, no win condition, right?”

“Not sure I-”

The spheres Kade had sent up into the air earlier came hurtling back down, smashing on the ground directly around them.

“So,” Kade said, as Tempera came stumbling out and dropped to her knees, pale and coughing heavily, “call it a tie?”

Tempera glanced up at her, weak and shaky, but very clearly grinning. “A tie it is.”

\-----

“...and then he says,” Kade continued, “when has a cross-section of conversation ever actually sounded like this?”

The others stared at her. Ty coughed awkwardly.

“Kade,” Sam said, almost gently, “no-one has any idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s…” she waved a hand incoherently. “It was a joke I heard once, but- forget it.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “How is a sentence fragment a joke?”

Kade took a swig of her drink. “...it’s metatextual,” she grumbled. 

Once they’d finished up the team meeting, and hashed out the more mundane details, Sam had suggested they all go out for drinks, to which Kade had hesitantly agreed. The bar they’d ended up at was small and quiet, with a slightly rustic look that was a bit too worn-in to be entirely intentional. A lot of places were like that these days - an attempt to construct something familiar without all of the same materials. Kade found it comforting, in an odd way. A reminder of where they’d been and where they were.

They were all back in civilian clothing, and thus Kade had been treated to the slightly-horrifying sight of Crystalclear removing the crystals that covered the upper half of his head, blood and vitreous fluids coming with it despite the lack of injury. Without them, he was average-looking, short blonde hair and blue eyes that seemed a little distant - par for the course with Thinkers. He’d introduced himself as Nathan, and Sam had quietly noted to her not to go with Nate, although she hadn’t specified why. 

Longscratch’s name turned out to be Ty - not a nickname, he specified when she asked. He was almost startlingly young, probably a full decade her junior, and after a bit of back-and-forth she’d learned his family was from Mexico City, and he spoke a little Spanish - just enough, at least, that he wasn’t fooled by her attempts to pass off insults as polite phrases. Still, it was nice.

“So, Kade.” Sam’s voice brought her back to the present, and she glanced over to see the other woman staring up at her with a mischievous grin. “Thought of a name yet?”

Kade rolled her eyes, taking another sip of her seltzer. “Thought of _plenty_ of names. The hard part is thinking of a _good_ one.”

“Amen to that,” Ty muttered. “Hey, I make long scratches, what should my name be? It’s not like all the claw-related names are taken, or anything.”

“I liked Eve,” Nathan offered. 

He was growing on Kade, she had to admit - a bit bland, but polite and well-meaning. Ty, too - he was an asshole, but he came by it honestly, and if anyone could respect that, it was her.

“Eh,” Kade said. “Bit too… fancy, I think.”

“Hey, Ty,” Sam joked, “could be worse. You could have used up all of your name options on your own.”

“Fuck you,” Kade laughed. “I wasn’t gonna go back to the apple well anyway. I was thinking… something to do with smoke or fumes or something.”

“Oh yeah,” Ty said, “come up with your cape name while drunk, that’ll go well.” 

She shook her drink at him. “Cone sold stober, kid.”

“You don’t drink?” Sam asked.

“Not anymore, no.” She left it at that, and the others didn’t pry.

At some point, the conversation turned to their cape careers, and they moved to a booth for a little more privacy. Ty, unsurprisingly, was green - he’d only had powers for a few months, and Tempera had run into him while he was practicing with them out in the forest. Nathan and Sam had both been Protectorate heroes before Golden Morning - she’d been with them for about a year, but he’d joined up only a few weeks beforehand. Kade had laughed at that, and immediately felt a little bad for doing so.

Only a little, though.

“So,” Sam muttered to her, leaning over close while Ty and Nathan were distracted, “what do you think?”

Kade tried to ignore the way their legs pressed together. “I think… yeah. No promises, but I think this might actually work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter's gonna be something a leetle bit... weird


	7. 1.7: Start At The Very Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kind of a weird one, like i said  
> might be good to re-familiarise yourself with the community centre attack if its a bit hazy

“So?” Sam asked. “What do you think?”

Kade turned slowly, inspecting herself in the mirror. “...damn,” she said at last, glancing back at Sam. “I look fucking _rad_.”

That earned a startled bark of laughter from the other woman. “‘Rad’? How _old_ are you?”

“Thirty, which means I was a teenager in the 90s and _you_ can’t fucking judge me.”

Sam blinked. “Wait, you’re really thirty?”

“Yee-esss? Didn’t you fuckin’ stalk me or whatever?”

“It, uh.” Sam scratched the back of her neck awkwardly. “It never came up.”

“Wait, how the fuck old are you, then?”

“25!” Kade breathed a sigh of relief. “Wait, how old did you think _I_ was?”

“...twenty-two.”

“What was that?”

“...twenty-two, twenty-three? I dunno, everyone below 25 looks the same to me!”

Sam laughed. “We’ve gotten off-topic, I think.”

“ _Your mom_ ’s off-topic.”

“Oh yeah, not showing your age at _all_.”

Kade stuck her tongue at Sam in the mirror, then gave another spin. She hadn’t just said that to be nice - she looked _rad_. The coat had already been costume-worthy, but Sam’s contact had taken it up another notch. They’d added a mantle on the shoulders, and flaps along the zipper at the front at a slight angle, giving it a slight, but pleasing, asymmetricality. Feeling around in the lining of the cuff, Kade found the switch for the fans, and watched as they turned on and the coat began fluttering dramatically. 

The real _pièce de résistance,_ to quote her ex Remy, was the hood. It had been lined with small weights at the top to keep it from flying back, and they’d added a slight peak to it so that it dipped down over her forehead. Kade’s favourite part, though, was the gauzy fabric that fell down from the inside of the hood, draping down over her nose and cheekbones. It didn’t impede Kade’s vision at all, but when viewed from the outside, it made it look like the top half of her face was hidden in deep shadows, regardless of the actual lighting. The note included with the coat had specified that while it was tinker- _made_ , it wasn’t tinker- _tech_ , and so wouldn’t require any maintenance - which Kade was a fan of, in this case and also in general.

The rest of her costume wasn’t as interesting, but it didn’t really need to be. She had a pair of dark grey cargo pants with forest-green trim and plenty of pockets, also courtesy of Sam’s tailor, and well-worn combat boots that had been part of her civilian wardrobe for years. She planned on keeping the jacket closed most of the time, but for when she didn’t, the black, ribbed tank top she wore had her symbol painted on it in apple green - a circle split down the middle, with stylised smoke spilling out. (The rosary hanging over it _wasn’t_ part of the costume - it must have come out when she spun - and Kade hastily tucked it back inside her shirt, out of sight).

It was all very stylish, very practical - and, most importantly, very _new_. Poison Apple never would’ve been caught dead in the outfit, which suited Kade just fine. _Die, then._ The only exception was her nail polish. She hadn’t gone as far as to get the acrylics that’d been a staple of her old outfits, but the shade of radioactive green was the same - a reminder to herself, and a little message. 

Kade hadn’t quite figured out _what_ the message was, exactly, but she was sure it’d sort itself out at some point.

“Sam,” Kade said, pulling the hood back so her face was visible, hoping the sincerity would come through. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

“Aw, shucks.” Sam waved a hand dismissively, but Kade didn’t miss her cheeks darkening. “T’weren’t no thang.”

“Twenty-five _and_ Southern? I’m learning all _sorts_ of fun things about you today, Tempera.”

“Says miss thirty-something.”

“ _Twenty-nine_ , thank you very much.”

“Oh, I’m _sorry_ , Kay,” Sam drawled. “Is everything alright?”

Kade turned around to find Rey, watching her with his head tilted in that weird way he did. 

“Oh, uh-” Kade shook her head, feeling confused. “Sorry, drifted off for a second. What’s up?”

“What do you think?” he repeated, gesturing off to the side. His fucky monitor set-up was showing one of those incomprehensible tinker diagrams he was always pulling out. 

“S’definitely a diagram,” she said with a yawn. “This another clone?”

“Psh,” Rey said, waving a hand dismissively. “So last week. This is gonna be our next big thing, Kay!”

She squinted at the diagram as she slipped out of bed, loping over to him. “...is that a fucking skyscraper?”

“For scale,” he confirmed happily.

Kade stared at it for a moment, then leant down and kissed him. “You’re a fuckin’ genius, Rey.”

“Aww, you don’t really mean that.”

Kade rolled her eyes, taking off her reading glasses and setting them down on the table. “For the last goddamn time, kid, _yes,_ I _do._ Get lost.”

The girl frowned, her too-wide eyes watery. “B-but I just-”

Kade slammed one hand down on the table, sending a _clang_ resonating through the prison library. “I _said_ ,” she hissed, “ _get. Lost._ Scram! Vamoose! Just fuckin’- leave me alone.”

The noise drew attention from the other occupants of the library, but Kade ignored them.

“But you’re _Poison Apple!_ I was your biggest fan, I even-”

The girl cut off as Kade started laughing, dropping her face down to rest between a page of text and a series of welding diagrams. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she said into the pages, before lifting her head. “Kid, trust me. Poison Apple’s fucking dead, and she deserves it. I’m not her, it’s fucking dumb to idolise a villain, and we’re both in fucking prison, so that’s a pretty good sign that _neither_ of us have made good decisions.”

“B-but-”

“But _nothing_. Hell, you _really_ wanna be like me?” She held up the book she was reading. “Go do the fucking jobs program then.”

The girl blinked at her, tears starting to form, but Kade ignored her, picking up her glasses and returning to her reading. The sound of receding footsteps should have made her feel better, but instead she just felt… _worn_ , and tired. 

Kade sighed, then rubbed at her throat. _And thirsty_. “I’m going to get a glass of water and get my head straight. I’ll catch up with the rest of you in a minute.”

“Don’t go running off.” Tempera’s face was stoic, but Kade could hear the tinge of amusement. “Get your water, take a minute, but come back after. I don’t want you to throw yourselves to the wolves.”

“I won’t,” Kade said, with an eyeroll that was hopefully hidden by her costume.

“Or whatever variant on that plan you might be thinking,” Tempera continued, more serious now. “I can see you trying to lead the enemy away from us.”

“I _won’t_ ,” Kade repeated, the words coming out colder than she’d intended. Truth be told, she’d been toying with the idea, but she wasn’t about to admit that.

“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Crystalclear added.

“Your future sight telling you that?” 

“I don’t see the future like that. You know that. But I do know that they’re mad at all of us. Our fortunes are intertwined, and their hate is- it’s not very targeted.”

“Not hate.” It was the patrol girl, with an odd look on her face. “It’s easy to see it as hate, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It’s not that. It’s blame.”

“Blame,” Kade muttered.

It was more to herself than as part of the conversation, but the patrol girl picked up on it anyway. “I don’t think it’s a reflection on you. Humanity is hurt. It’s hurt in a way that makes it a little bit animal. Reactive. They’re snapping at any target that presents itself, because the hurt is fresh. They’re taking that hurt and they’re looking for anyone they can put it onto. You…”

“We presented ourselves,” Tempera said.

“Not in a bad way,” the patrol girl said. “This isn’t your fault.”

 _Fuck this._ “I’ll get my water,” Kade snapped. She spun on her heel and stalked out of the room, fuming. 

Stupid condescending patrol asshole, stupid team, stupid _her_ for thinking this could have actually worked, _stupid_ goddamn Brutes that just won’t fucking go down. She smashed another sphere directly into Lord of Loss’s face, but the fucker just reared back and slashed at the patrol girl again like it was nothing. 

Tempera’s paint swelled over the villain, hardening and trying to hold him down, but he just shattered it like it was nothing. He stalked towards Kade, and she backed off in turn, summoning more spheres but waiting for the patrol girl (who could fucking _fly_ now) to back off.

Lord of Loss hit her again, bouncing off an invisible forcefield and cracking the pavement below them. Then, he did it again, and again, and Kade took advantage of the distraction to start lining up a barrage, until someone punched her in the gut. 

“Fucking asshole!” she screamed, staggering back, wiping the blood away from her nose. 

She couldn’t see Craven’s face behind his gas mask, but she could tell he was grinning. “Little girl, all alone. You’ve wandered into the woods, darling, and here there be wolves.”

“Shut up,” Kade spat, hurling another sphere, which smashed uselessly against his chest. She snarled in frustration, but before she could do anything else, something swiped her leg out from underneath her. She landed hard, the wind driven out of her, and before she could recover, Craven was there, one armoured foot planted on her stomach, pressing down.

“This is our town,” he hissed, leaning down, but paused as Kade puffed out her cheeks. “Oh? That’s _very_ mature-”

She bit down with a crunch _,_ and _spat._ Craven reared back as the liquid from the sphere she’d broken inside her mouth splashed against his mask, coughing and gagging as some made it through to his skin.

The pressure on her abdomen disappeared, although the pain lingered. _Need to get up_ , she thought woozily. “Need to get up,” she repeated out loud.

“Why?” She glanced over to see Rey grinning at her. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“Oh,” Kade murmured in his ear, rolling over, “I can think of a few ways to keep occupied.”

She slid one hand beneath the sheets, enjoying the way Sam’s breath caught in her throat at the touch.

“Oh,” Sam murmured. “Oh, Kade, that’s- Kade! Kade!”

Kade blinked, then again, but her vision didn’t grow any clearer. “What’s…” she started to ask, but her stomach immediately exploded with pain.

“You’ve been shot, Kade.” Sam’s voice, tight and stressed. Then, head turning away, “Put your hands here.”

Her fuzzy form was replaced in Kade’s vision by Victoria, as hands pressed against her wound.

“Not-” Kade grunted.

“Not?” Rey asked.

“Not a good day,” she muttered, through gasps.

“What do you mean?” He looked up from his computer, grinning that adorable crooked grin of his. “It’s a great day! We’re finally gonna shove Accord’s nose in it.”

“Hell yeah we are.” She walked over to him, draping herself over him, head resting on his shoulder. “How are we gonna do that?”

“Well, first of all, I’m gonna get kidnapped by the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

“Uh-huh,” Kade said with a nod, the motion rocking him back and forth. 

“Then, I’m going to get some freaky Bonesaw crap stuck in my spine to override my nervous system.”

“Sounds good so far.”

“Then she’ll spend two years puppetting my body while I’m still conscious, using it and all my know-how-”

“All your fancy space-brain voodoo,” Kade teased, flicking him in the forehead.

“-all my _space-brain voodoo_ ,” he corrected, “to make a bunch of clones of the worst murderers in known history!” He glanced over, raising his eyebrows. “Sounds like a pretty good day, right?”

“Nope,” Kade said, leaning in. “Sounds like it’s not a _good_ day at all.”

“Not a good day for any of us,” Tempera confirmed, as Kade’s vision finally faded into darkness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case its not clear, the bit at the end didn't actually happen like that. kade's got... Some Stuff going on


	8. 1.8: Risin' Up, Back On The Streets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not dead, bitches!  
> this takes place directly after the scene with Fume Hood in Flare 2.2

“Why don’t you like her?”

Kade sighed, leaning back in her hospital bed, pulling her gaze away from the patrol girl as she disappeared down the corridor. “What do you mean?” she asked, prevaricating.

Sam rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean, Kade. You get all… snippy with her. Bratty, even.”

“...dunno,” Kade lied. “Rubs me the wrong way, I guess.”

“She probably saved your life, Kade,” Nathan pointed out.

“No, _Sam_ saved my life. _She_ just strutted in like she owned the place and started barking orders.”

“You’re not being fair,” Sam said, a little dispassionate, “and I think you know it.”

“I got _shot_ ,” Kade grumbled. “I’m allowed to be unfair.”

“Why does that sound rote?” Sam asked.

“Rote?”

“Like… something you’ve said so many times that you don’t even have to think about it.”

“Oh.” Kade shrugged a shoulder, then winced at the pain it caused. “Cause it is, then.”

“You’ve been shot before?” Nathan started to ask, but Sam held up a hand and cut him off.

“ _How many times_ have you been shot before?”

“Uh, hm. Jacksonville, Mayfair… Charlotte? Two and two, four, then Boston twice… no, three times, so that’s…” She counted off on her fingers. “Seven or eight times, depending on how you count it.”

“You’ve been _shot at_ seven times?!” Nathan asked.

“No,” she replied, irritated, “I’ve been _shot_ seven times. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been shot _at_ , I’d have fucking retired to Guernica.”

“... _Guernica?_ ” Sam said.

“There’s a nice nature reserve I saw on TV, sue me. The point is, patrol girl’s a smug ass and I have zero obligation to care about her _fee-fees_.” A thought occurred to her. “Wait, neither of you have been shot? Like, ever?”

“ _No_ ,” Sam said emphatically. “You _have_ to know that’s not normal.”

“For _civilians,_ sure.” Kade said it like it was a dirty word. “But we’re capes! That’s just part of the deal!”

Sam stared at her. “It… _really_ isn’t.”

“Feh.” Kade settled back against her pillows. “Kids these days.” Her throat was sore from all the yakking, and she drained her nearly-full water bottle in one straight go. The others had continued talking, but as Kade lowered the bottle and wiped her mouth, she realised Sam had trailed off, and was looking at her strangely.

“What?”

The other woman blinked, then shook her head. “Nothing, sorry. Just…” She didn’t make any attempt to finish the sentence, suddenly very intent on inspecting the care roster on the wall.

 _Weird_. Kade mentally shrugged, and let it go. Everyone had a right to be a bit weird, the way she saw it. “You were saying something about Brockton Bay?” she prompted the others.

Nathan nodded. He had a small crystal in his hands, and was idly passing it back and forth. “Sam was saying she visited there briefly.”

“ _Very_ briefly,” Sam corrected, attention returning. “I stopped over for literally a day, when I was being reassigned. It was… weird.”

“No kidding,” Kade laughed. “BB was a fucking nightmare, god. Even before all the…” She waved a hand, and the others nodded, understanding. “Biggest fucking nazi population on the east coast and Lung was a fucking POS scary dragon asshole. I mean, fuck, when Boston and fucking _Accord_ were the better option, you knew a place was fucked. Actually, I nearly ended up working there for a while, y’know?”

“Even with everything you just mentioned?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, well, it was a _real_ fucking good offer. The fucking uh, Calvin guy. Coil, you know?”

Sam nodded, but Nathan shook his head. “He was a BB villain, pretty low-key, but then it turned out he was secretly bankrolling a bunch of other villains and also was like buddy-buddy with the PRT and nearly took over the whole fucking city. _Except_ , one of those teams was the fucking Undersiders, so…” She drew a finger across her throat and made a gagging noise. “Anyway I didn’t know it was him until later, but he was offering big bucks under the table, I was, uh, on the outs with my usual crew at the time, I nearly went for it.” She shook her head, chuckingly bitterly. “Thank _fucking_ Christ I didn’t, huh?”

“What made you decide against it?” Nathan asked, seeming genuinely curious.

“Eh.” Kade shrugged a shoulder. “Remembered I didn’t like working alone.” Plus, she’d been trying to get back in Rey’s good graces at the time. For all the fucking good that had done. “Why were we talking about the bay, anyway?”

“It’s where Victoria said she was from.” Sam’s voice was carefully neutral, but Kade was too distracted by some mental puzzle pieces falling into place.

“Wait, hold on the fuck. Patrol girl was from goddamn New Wave? The fucking uh, Kid Alexandria?” That… _kinda_ made sense? Though, she was pretty sure that all of the Brockton Brickheads had _coloured_ forcefields, and the patrol girl had been deflecting hits without touching them. “Wait, I thought she died.”

Sam was giving her an odd look. “Glory Girl, yeah, though she said she’s not using the name anymore.” _Glory Hole, that was it_. “You knew her family?”

“I mean, I didn’t know they were her _family_ , but yeah. They were at the Boston Games - you both know about the games, right?” They both nodded. “Right, yeah. Got kicked in the face three fucking separate times by Photon Mom, lost two teeth.” She opened her mouth, pointing to the fillings in question. “Kinda makes someone stick in your memory. Plus, R- Blasto was always going on about how he’d die to get a scan of Panacea’s power.” 

Nathan surprised her by giving a soft chuckle. “Tinkers, huh.”

“Yeah,” Kade agreed, “ _fucking_ Tinkers, man.”

Sam snorted, one hand in front of her mouth. “You’d know all about that, huh, Kade?”

“Hey fuck you! I only dated like… seven, eight, ten… I basically only dated like ten, ish!”

“Out of how many?” Nathan asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“Who the fuck keeps count?”

Silently, they both held up their hands, Nathan raising one finger, Sam raising two.

“...seriously?” Kade asked. “Damn, if I’d known this team had so little collective game I might’ve reconsidered.”

The others laughed, but the reminder of the current state of their group dampened the mood. 

The conversation shifted back towards other teams, but Kade found herself drifting off again, idly toying with her rosary. Sam and Nathan were talking about the Attendant, continuing what they’d been discussing with the patrol girl. Kade managed to offer a comment or joke occasionally, but mostly she just let the noise wash over her, trying to avoid thinking about the future. She’d gotten rather good at that over the years.

“Kade?” Sam’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Nathan was saying he has to go.”

“Oh, uh,” she briefly fumbled around with her hands, before proffering one to the man in question. “Good to… see you? What’s the fucking protocol here.”

Nathan chuckled. “I’m glad you’re okay, Kade. Like Victoria said, keep in touch, yeah?”

She stuck out her tongue, but it quickly gave way to a smile. “For sure. Remember me when you’re in charge of the white hats, yeah?”

That one got a chuckle out of Sam, and she bid the other hero a quiet goodbye. “Foresight called,” she explained, obviously aware Kade hadn’t been listening. “Something with a new member that’s giving them some grief.”

The other woman paused, then sighed, walking over to sit down on the edge of the hospital bed. She was short enough that her legs actually dangled off the ground slightly. 

“Kade,” she started, with an uncomfortably intense stare, “you weren’t serious, were you? Earlier, when you joked about going back to being a villain?”

“...nah,” Kade replied after a second. “Just trying to get on patrol girl’s nerves. Seemed like it was the easiest way.”

Sam visibly sagged with relief, and Kade felt even worse about lying to her than she already had. Truth be told, she _had_ been considering it - or, well, the thought had been lurking in the back of her mind. 

“That’s good,” Sam said. “I mean, I got you into this, and I kinda feel responsible for you getting hurt. If it made you go back, waste all the effort you’d made…”

“It’s not a big deal, Sam?” She hadn’t intended to make it a question. “No-one died, and even if I did go back, there’d still be the same number of capes on your side as before. Neutral result, right?”

Sam shook her head. “No, it’s… This team, it wasn’t something I _needed_ to do, Kade, it was something I _wanted_ to do. I’ve gotten by just fine being in the Wardens’ orbit, and I can go back to it without too much hassle. It’s just…” She clenched a fist. “This was supposed to _be_ something, y’know?”

“Yeah. It’s… it sucks.”

“But…” When Kade glanced up, there was a glimmer of something in Sam’s eye. “What if I said it still could be?”

Kade tried not to let the other woman’s excitement infect her, to limited success. “...what are you suggesting?”

“The team might not be happening anymore, but the groundwork I did hasn’t just disappeared.”

“And you want me to take it up anyway,” Kade finished. 

“ _Exactly._ I have lists, I have information, I have-” Sam was getting excited again, hands flapping slightly in front of her chest. It was cute, in a weird way. “Are you sure you’re serious? About trying again? Like I know, but are you _serious?_ Cause I-”

Kade held up a hand. “Sam. I’m serious, yeah.” The grin that stretched across Sam’s face was quickly mirrored by her own, but it dimmed when she glanced down, at the IV tube feeding into her hand. “Might need a week or two, though.”

Sam’s grin turned sly. “Well, if you’re being a _hero_ , then it’s possible I might be able to arrange some healing-”  
“ _No_!” Kade didn’t even realise she’d yelled until Sam winced at the sudden loud noise. “ _No_ ,” she repeated, at a more appropriate volume but just as intense. “I don’t even want to be in the same fucking _building_ as that kid, and-”

“Kid? Kade, what- who are you talking about?!”

“Who the fuck do you _think_ I’m talking about?! Fucking _Bonesaw!_ I don’t give a rat’s fucking ass if she says she’s ‘redeemed’ or whatever bullshit, I’ll blow my own brains out before you put me in a room with her.”

“I…” Sam seemed shocked by her reaction, for some reason. _Thought you did your research._ “...I wasn’t going to suggest her anyway,” she said delicately. “There’s another healer on Advance Guard, and-”

The ringing of Sam’s phone interrupted them, and the woman in question cursed quietly before answering it. “Victoria?” she said, turning away. “No, it’s fine. What’s up?”

She listened for a minute or so, leaving Kade to fume in her now-impotent anger and frustration and regret. 

“Okay, I’ll be out in a minute. That was Victoria,” she clarified to Kade as she hung up. “There’s a situation with one of the patients, she needs-”

“Go,” Kade interrupted, waving a hand. “I’m not a child, I’ll be fine.”

Sam nodded, then turned and strode out of the room without hesitation, smearing paint over her face as she went. And despite what Kade had said, the room _did_ feel a little colder without her.

“You get all that, _vieja?_ ” she said, twirling her rosary around one hand. “Guess I’m still doing this.”

Despite the fact that it’d gotten her shot, despite the fact that she didn’t have a team anymore, she was still doing this.

“Stupid fucking heroes,” she muttered. “Stupid fucking capes and stupid fucking _Sam_ and stupid fucking me.” 

Despite everything, though, a laugh came bubbling up from her chest and spilled out into the empty room. _Fuck it, right?_

_Bet we’ll get bored after a week anyway._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's the end of arc 1! we'll be back (hopefully in less than a month this time) with the beginning of arc 2 which im real fucking excited for cause I Am Very Smart and have had genius ideas.


	9. 2.1: Let's Get Started (Again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow that was quick huh! im just awesome like that

**Three Weeks Later**

Sunday Redcliffe took a deep breath, steeled her nerves, then rapped her knuckles twice against the doorframe.

“Come in!” a muffled voice called. 

Sunday had struggled finding the place - the directions she’d been given led her around in circles, too many locations that fell under the descriptions given. Eventually, she’d worked up the nerve to ask a passerby, and had been led right to her destination; an unassuming door just off the main road through the Norfair span. Truth be told, she still didn’t have much of a grasp on the whole span/stretch system - the refugee camps just stretched outwards in every direction, and any sort of organisation came haphazardly and after the fact.

It didn’t help that she’d been looking for… well, she didn’t know what she’d been looking for. Some kind of sign, perhaps - one of those doors with the glazed glass like in a noir film. Not a sturdy white door that seemed familiar for reasons she couldn’t quite pin down, with the word ‘Knock’ carved into it. Not the strong smell of antiseptic and bleach that made her think of a public swimming pool, either.

Sunday took another breath, this time more for clean air, and opened the door, stepping inside.

The room within continued to defy her expectations. It was surprisingly high-ceilinged, with a row of windows near the roof letting in enough illumination that the fluorescent lights probably didn’t need to be on. A desk sat in the middle of the room, old and scarred but sturdy, with papers and stationery scattered haphazardly across its surface. A chair sat behind it, but it was empty and turned 90 degrees to one side. Filing cabinets lined the left-hand wall, papers sticking out from the gaps to bely the appearance of organisation.

As Sunday took in the tiled floors and walls, and the gaps in said tiling, her brain finally made the connection that had sparked at the door. Despite the fact that the desk and filing cabinets were the only furniture in the room, it was abundantly clear that the ‘office’ was in fact a hastily-renovated public restroom.

Which also explained the smell, she thought, wrinkling her nose. Although it was probably better than the alternative.

“Hello?” Sunday said tentatively.

“Down here,” the same voice said, coming from behind the desk.

Cautiously, Sunday moved to the side, until the woman she was looking for finally came into view.

Fume Hood was lying on the floor, feet up on the office chair, holding a manila file folder over her face. She was wearing the coat part of her costume, but instead of the bottom half, she had on a pair of faded basketball shorts and tattered runners, leaving her _remarkably_ hairy legs visible. Various identical folders were scattered on the floor around her, and an empty glass bottle sat on its side.

Sunday stared at her for a moment. Clearly, her expectations weren’t doing her any good, so it was probably easier to abandon them entirely. “Ms… Hood?”

The hero in question snorted at that. “First name Fume, last name Hood, that’s cute. What can I-” Her hooded face tilted slightly to look at Sunday for the first time, and she paused. “Huh.”

Sunday wasn’t in costume, exactly, but she had assembled what she thought of as a 'civilian' version of it - a simple, shorter dress in the same colour, and a toned-down version of the extravagant eye makeup. Hopefully, it was close enough for Fume Hood to make the connection. “Um, hi. You might not remember me, but we worked together on the stakeout?”

“Oh yeah, the Minor Mishaps!”

“Major Malfunctions,” Sunday corrected, but the older woman didn’t seem to hear.

“You’d be the leader then? Caryatid, right?”

Sunday nodded, a little surprised she’d remembered _that_ but not the team name. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“Hm.” With a groan, Fume Hood sat up, swinging her legs down off the chair, and using the desk to haul herself to her feet. “Other anklebiters not with you?”

Sunday refrained from pointing out that she was taller than the other woman. “They both have class today, but I graduated last year.”

“Oh, congrats.” The comment was surprisingly genuine. “I thought you and the tinker were the same age, t’be honest.”

“We are. He just dropped out earlier than I did, so there’s more to catch up on.”

“Hey, drop-out club, represent.” Fume Hood ducked behind the desk, coming up with a small camping cooler. “You drink?” she asked, the sound of clinking glass accompanying her rummaging.

“...no.” _Also, I’m underage, and_ also _it’s ten in the morning._

Fume Hood grinned. “Good answer.” She held up two unmarked bottles. “This is some weird Russian beet drink. Lady gave me a crate a bit back and it’s actually kinda nice, once you burn away enough taste buds.”

“I’ll… pass, thank you.” Fume Hood shrugged, putting one bottle back and cracking the other open before taking a swig. Sunday caught a whiff of a noxious smell that reminded her of turpentine and carrots, and felt secure in her decision.

“So,” Fume Hood said, voice a little hoarse, “what can I do you for? Patrol girl send you?”

“...patrol girl?”

“Wassername, something Dallon.”

“Oh. No, Antares didn’t send me, no. I just…” _No, this is stupid._

“You just…” Fume Hood prompted.

“Well…” Sunday paused, then forced herself to power on. “Ikindofthoughtyoumightneedanassistant?”

Fume Hood’s eyes weren’t visible under her hood, but Sunday got the distinct impression of an incredulous blink regardless. “...come again?”

“I thought-” She paused again, flapping her hands slightly to centre herself. “Like I said, the rest of my team has school a lot of the time, and I don’t, but there aren’t any other jobs and I want to be useful and we already knew you and you mentioned you don’t have a team so I thought that maybe you could- use an extra set of hands?” 

Fume Hood stared at her for a few seconds. “...you want… to be my sidekick?” she asked, utterly bemused.

“No! ...well, not your _sidekick,_ I just thought-” she shook her head. “I’m sorry, this was stupid, I’ll just go-”

“Hey.” Fume Hood’s voice was surprisingly soft, enough that it caught Sunday off-guard. “I’m not mad or anything. You just caught me off-guard, s’all.”

Sunday let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. “Right, I’m sorry.”

Fume Hood nodded, then took another swig of her drink before immediately gagging. “L- oh god,” she coughed, “that’s a spicy one.” _Why is it_ spicy?! “Listen, kid,” she continued once she’d recovered, “can I ask something?”

“...sure.”

Fume Hood set her drink down on her desk. “Why me?” she asked, leaning back against it.

“...like I said, I already knew you, a little, and we don’t really- know many heroes. And I just thought- we’ve been heroes for a long time.” 

“Sure,” Fume Hood said, not seeming bothered by the tangent. “Since diapers, right?”

Sunday laughed. “Not quite, but… since puberty, I guess. But we never really did any… _heroing_ , I guess. There wasn’t really any to do in the first place. And I looked you up and you were a villain for a long time, so I kind of thought… you have experience being a cape, and I have experience with being a _hero_ , sort of. So maybe we can… help each other?”

Sunday trailed off, clasping her hands nervously behind her. Fume Hood looked- well, Sunday couldn’t really tell what she looked like under her hood, but her posture seemed almost contemplative. 

“Okay,” she said after almost a minute of silence. “I… you’re not talking nonsense. And another set of hands would be nice. So let’s do this. I was about to head out and talk to some folks; you can tag along, get a sense of- you know, the lay of the land and shit. And if you’re not completely useless, and you don’t hate my guts by the end of it, we can- we can see where we go from there.” She stuck out a hand. “Deal?”

Sunday hesitated, then took it. “Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am pretty sure this is the first appearance of caryatid in any fic, so go me i guess!  
> ALSO IMPORTANTLY THE MAJOR MALFUNCTIONS ARE FROM NORTH DAKOTA SO PLEASE READ ALL OF HER DIALOGUE IN A FARGO ACCENT  
> to be honest looking back this should've been the very first chapter of the fic, with arc 1 happening later as like a flashback arc but live and learn i guess! also we're gonna be doing like a case of the week format now, so don't worry we haven't skipped over those three weeks - arc 3 will be a Paint Fumes Adventure set during them, and we'll also see Kade's very first case at some point - probably arc 5, with arc 4 being a sunday viewpoint arc again.  
> also yes sunday/caryatid will be the viewpoint for this arc but kade's isnt gone forever dw


	10. 2.2: Let's Get Down To Business

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we back bonches

“So,” Fume Hood asked as she locked the door to her ‘office’, “what’s a caryatid when it’s at home?”

“...a type of load-bearing pillar from Ancient Greece,” Sunday answered slowly. She’d been expecting the other woman to put the rest of her costume on, but the basketball shorts remained… _extremely_ present. Her legs really were _remarkably_ hairy - she probably never had to buy mosquito repellant. “They’d carve them into the shape of women in loose drapes, holding the building up with their heads. The word means ‘maidens of Karyai’, which was a small town in Peloponnese. It's actually spelled _karyatides_ with a k, but the Roman transcription was the one that caught on, and they used the c, because in Latin the ‘c’ is always a hard ‘kuh’ sound, which also actually means that what we say as veni, vidi, vici would actually be pronounced more like weni widi wiki-” Sunday realised she’d been going on, and cut her herself off abruptly. “...so yeah,” she finished lamely. “It seemed appropriate.”

Fume Hood nodded appreciatively, setting out with a confident stride. “Hey, I ain’t gonna criticise name shit. I almost went by _Horse Apple_ for a bit there.” Sunday failed to suppress a snort, but the grin the older woman gave her seemed to indicate she didn’t mind. “Yeah, I know. Look, even Fume Hood’s a bit crap, but I figure that’s my rep now. Or, whatever you kids call it these days. Brand?”

“I’m not a kid,” Sunday said, a little coolly.

Fume Hood didn’t seem to notice, though. “Oh, sure, yeah. Hey, Pietr.”

It took Sunday an embarrassing amount of time to realise the last part wasn’t addressed at her, but at the heavyset white man with a moustache coming down the other way on the sidewalk.

“Kade,” he rumbled back, and Sunday blinked. _Kade? Did- is that her_ name _?!_ “Some weather, eh?”

Fume Hood snorted. “If you start going on about the homeland again, I’m letting you get robbed next time.”

Pietr raised his hands in mock-surrender as they passed each other. “I say nothing.”

“He grew up in middle of bumfuck Russia,” Fume Hood explained once they were out of earshot. “Swear to god, half this fucking neighbourhood is actually _looking forward_ to the winter.”

How they were going to get through the winter at the camp was something Sunday had been stressing over herself. If worse came to worse, Noah could rig up some heating, but they’d learned too many times back in Fargo not to rely on his power for practical things like that. Sure, the weather had technically been worse back then, but they’d also had a _house_ , a roof over their head, instead of fabric and a secondhand tarpaulin. 

“So anyway,” Fume Hood said, interrupting her line of thought. The hero had turned and was walking backwards, hands in pockets and utterly unconcerned, “did I say where we’re going yet?”

Sunday shook her head.

“Good, cause I changed my mind anyway. I _was_ gonna go do some more digging at the dump, but with some extra muscle, I’m thinking we pay an old friend a visit.” Her tone made it clear what she actually thought of said ‘friend’. “Sound good?”

Sunday filed away the reference to the dump for later inquiry. “Are they a cape?”

Fume Hood snorted. “Only barely, but yeah. Nothing to worry about, she won’t attack us. Unless she’s gotten even stupider, which is definitely possible... Yeah, okay. Remind me of your power again, kid?” Sunday didn’t even have a chance to react before the other woman winced. “Ah, sorry. Just a habit.”

Sunday nodded. She appreciated the effort, if nothing else. “I’m a... breaker/thinker,” she said, the recently-learned terms still feeling weird to say aloud. “Is it okay if I demonstrate?”

Fume Hood gave her a thumbs up.

Sunday let her power unfurl slowly, rolling upwards over her body. As always, there was a brief moment of disorientation as it covered her eyes - she didn’t see in the traditional sense when she was in her other state, and it took her brain a moment to adjust to the altered perception. The closest comparison she could make was a kind of touch-based echolocation - it was if the shifting, undulating waves of her breaker state created ripples around her, and the way that they bounced and shifted and moved was translated to information by her- what had Miss Dallon called it? Her passenger? Her power, maybe. 

It had its upsides and downsides. For example, she couldn’t ‘see’ well beyond a hundred meters or so - not too different from normal vision, she supposed. Also like normal vision, there were obstructions that could block her - not quite as straightforwardly as line-of-sight, but the nuances of how the ‘ripples’ bounced and echoed meant that she had blindspots in strange spaces. Obviously, it was much more limited indoors, but the higher density of ripples in a space meant that she was able to glean much more information as a tradeoff. 

That was the main advantage of her breaker form, conversely - she could glean a much higher amount of information than she could ordinarily. Shape and colour and size and position, yes, but also texture, substance, and sometimes even mass and density. Standing still helped - it didn’t increase the resolution of the information she picked up, but it did allow her to direct the ripples to a much finer degree.

All of which got condensed down into “I have a sensory thinker power.”

Fume Hood nodded appreciatively. “Dope.” With her power active, Sunday could ‘see’ the hero’s face underneath her hood. She intentionally avoided paying attention to the shape or distinguishing features, but couldn’t help but notice the high amount of metal piercings. “Why’d you need me to hold this?”

Sunday let her form revert, trying to ignore the pang of loss and sense of blindness that came with doing so. “It chews up most things that aren’t me or my clothing.”

“Chews up?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“But not your clothes…”

“Miss Dallon said that isn’t unusual for breakers?” She hadn’t intended it to be a question, but realised just too late that she’d said ‘Miss Dallon’ instead of ‘Antares’.

Fume Hood grinned, a little meanly. “You know she’s only like a year older than you, right?”

Sunday blinked. “...pardon?” She’d thought M- _Antares_ was in her mid-twenties, at least!

Seeing the expression on her face, Fume Hood began to cackle clutching at her sides. “Oh, this is too good,” she wheezed, doubling over.

“I’d ask,” a new voice interrupted, “but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.”

Sunday turned to see a hero she recognised from one of the network’s meetings. Tempura? Tempera, that was it. A wave of white paint was dissolving into dust around her feet as she walked the last few steps towards them, and Sunday got the impression she had been riding it up until that point. “You okay, Fume?”

“Just- peachy!” the hero in question managed to choke out through her laughter. 

Tempera turned to Sunday. “I’d apologise for her, but that would imply I was somehow responsible.” Despite the words, her tone was light, and a small smile played across her lips. “It’s Caryatid, right? I heard about the thing with Teacher’s people from Antares - that was good work.”

Sunday had never been more glad that she wasn’t physiologically inclined to blushing. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Fume Hood’s laughter had just begun to die down, but her words set her off again with renewed vigour. “ _Ma’am!_ ” she cackled. 

“Alright,” Tempera said, “ _now_ I apologise for her.” She was still grinning, though. “And please, no ma’am, you’ll make me feel like an old lady.”

“Sorry, m- Tempera.” The woman’s grin was infectious, and Sunday couldn’t help but mirror it slightly. “Old habits.”

“I get that.” She turned to Fume Hood. “You going to keep this up all day? I have places to be.”

Fume Hood immediately straightened up, wiping away a tear in the shadow of her hood. “C’mon, Tempe, let me have my fun.”

“You have _plenty_ of fun. You could do with _less_ fun.”

“Hey, I got shot, I can do whatever I want.”

“You got shot?” Sunday asked. “With a gun?”

“She did,” Tempera confirmed, “and she hasn’t let us forget it since.”

“That’s not a very nice way to treat someone who got shot.”

Tempera glanced at Sunday, as if to say _see what I mean?_ “I’m being _nice_ by getting you those files you asked for.”

Fume Hood took her empty hands by the wrists and lifted them up, waggling them about. “Not seeing any files.”

For whatever reason, Tempera’s smile had become slightly shaky. “Antares will be dropping them over later.”

Fume Hood let out an exaggerated sigh, letting go and stepping back. “This is revenge for the spaghetti thing, isn’t it?”  
Tempera’s eyes twinkled. “No comment.”

Sunday was beginning to feel distinctly… extraneous. 

“Ugh,” Fume Hood groaned. “What time?”

“She didn’t specify.”

“ _Ugh_.” 

“It’s fine; she’ll just slide them under the door if you’re out, I imagine.”

“Oh, good plan!” Fume Hood clicked her fingers at Sunday. “New sidekick! Remind me to stay out for as long as possible.”

Sunday nodded, committing it to memory.

Tempera raised an eyebrow. “New sidekick?”

“Not really,” Sunday explained. “I’m just… helping out. Hopefully.”

“Oh, good for you.” She leaned in a bit closer, lowering her voice. “Don’t let her boss you around, yeah? It’s mostly bark.”

“I’m right here, Tempe.”

“It’s mostly bark,” she repeated at normal volume, straight to Fume Hood’s face. “Listen, I have to go. You still working the rally on Friday, Fume?”

“I mean, I’m still broke, so yeah.”

“Great.” Tempera grinned again. “See you there?”

“See you there.” Fume Hood gave a little wave, as a swell of paint rose up around Tempera, carrying her away. “We do security for rallies and protests and stuff,” she explained. “Easy money, if you’re interested.”

“That… actually might good, thanks.” Her curiosity got the better of her. “How long have you been together?” she asked, gesturing to the disappearing form of Tempera in the distance.

Fume Hood laughed. “Oh, we’re not on a team. We _were_ gonna be, but that fell through with the whole ‘getting shot’ thing.”

Sunday went to clarify that that hadn’t been what she meant, thought about the look on Tempera’s face when Fume Hood had taken her hands, and reconsidered.

“Alright,” the hero said, oblivious. “Let’s go get smashed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Noah is Withdrawal btw, once again 0 canon details so im just making shit up and he seems like a noah. im thinking Edie for Finale but not 100% settled on it.
> 
> next update might not be for a bit - i need to focus on my other writing for a bit, and even when doing fic i think im going to try and focus on wake a bit more cause it has more of a concrete like end point as opposed to the much longer/free-form plan for this fic


End file.
